Chapter 3
WESTFIELD, NJ AUGUST 2000
RESTING AGAINST AN OAK, Joe drained a can of Bud. It felt good to be outside like he used to do every Thursday, his day to hit the links from April through the first snowy winter day. Running a hand over the grip of the five-iron nestled in the manicured grass, Joe fought the urge to take a hack at the lone dandelion that managed to evade an army of landscapers on the payroll of Fairview Cemetery.
Taking a hit on his tenth Marlboro of the day, brought a strange pain underneath his breast bone like sandpaper on sandpaper. Elaine never lost an opportunity to predict that he would end up like Uncle Ernie on an oxygen tank after losing a lung. Maybe she was right when she suggested he purchase a plot—it was only a matter of time and he ought to choose the spot.
Joe coughed up a plug of nicotine infused mucous, spitting it toward a primrose patch. He checked his watch—ten o’clock. Dr. Headcase would be proud. He hadn’t seen the rising sun in a year. He’d been on the hill since eight for one reason: Until he saw the dirt flooding over Preston Swedge, it wasn’t over.
Ed Stoval said that Preston’s attorney came by to pick up one of Preston’s suits. The arrangements were private. Joe laughed at the idea—nothing was private. Catman Prather, an ex-con Joe helped get a job at Holly’s Home for Funerals, had given him the heads up the day before that Preston’s body was being released by the medical examiner. The burial had to be done on the quick, before eleven the next day. Catman didn’t know why. The caretaker at Fairview bitched and moaned he wouldn’t have the gravesite prepared. A promised C-note assured a backhoe would be digging by eight in the Oakdale section.
Joe reached into his goodie bag, retrieved an opened bag of Cheese Doodles, and popped a handful into his mouth. After muscling a canopy over the plot to keep the grieving family out of the blazing sun, two gravediggers tidied the work area, covering the excavated earth with a green tarpaulin. Joe snapped open the front page of The Star Ledger. The lead article—“Vice President Al Gore told reporters during a press conference before boarding his plane at Edwards Air Force Base that he had not ruled out the possibility of including Ralph Nader or other third party candidates in the upcoming presidential debates.” Joe had one comment, “The schmucks deserve each other.”
He flipped the paper to the death notices, a habit he claimed he inherited from his mother. Dr. Headcase said it was a manifestation of an unconscious need to be assured that one was still alive. Joe knew the psychobabble was bullshit. He was looking for names of those he consciously wanted dead.
Surveying the one hundred ten acres produced a shiver even though the temperature hovered near eighty. He never bought into the line of the dearly departed going to a better place, not believing it when they lowered his cancer riddled grandmother into the hole when he was six or when his best buddy from his Marine unit decided to ventilate the side of his head. It didn’t matter that the poor devil never made it as a civilian, stumbling from one job to another with stops along the way in psyche units and county jails. Once in that box you were finished, kaput, bye-bye, worm meal. Spending twenty grand on a polished granite mausoleum with stained glass windows made perfect sense.
A hearse followed by a gray Camry turned onto Oakdale Avenue. The procession stopped twenty yards from the gravesite. A frail elderly man of average height, who Joe identified as Reverend James Miller, got out of the front passenger seat.
The sight of the six-three, gray bearded rabbi from the Westfield temple, Bernard Balaban, unfolding from behind the wheel brought Joe to his feet and squished his plan of watching the proceedings from the hill. Preston’s protesting the placing of the Jewish holidays on the school calendar at a board of education meeting was legendary. “The fucking Jew Rothstein” still rang in his ears. Joe looked around. “Lillie, you’re not going to miss these,” he said, lifting a flowerpot of petunias from the grave of Lillie Pfaphenbach deceased since 1975. Putting on an oversized pair of sunglasses, he adjusted his Yankee cap to just over his eyes and began descending the hill.
An attendant from Holly’s Home for Funerals transferred a burnished walnut casket to a gurney. The man of the hour was wheeled to the entrance of his freshly dug subterranean condo where the two cemetery workers placed the casket onto the lowering device.
Joe circled the section, approaching from the far side. Miller’s voice carried in the slight breeze, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want…” Joe placed the flowers at the base of a tombstone fifteen feet from Balaban and Miller.
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever,” Miller concluded.
Balaban took a step closer to the grave. “Yeetgadal v’ yeetkadash sh’mey rabbah. B’almah dee v’rah kheer’utey. V’ yamleekh malkhutei, b’chahyeykhohn, uv’ yohmeykhohn. uv’chahyei d’chohl beyt yisrael, ba’agalah u’veez’man kareev, v’eemru Amein.”
“Amen,” Miller said.
Joe said a silent “Amen” recognizing the classic Hebrew mourner’s prayer for the dead. He took a step closer.
Balaban continued, “May His great Name grow exalted and sanctified in the world that He created as He willed. May He give reign to His kingship in your lifetimes and in your days, and in the lifetimes of the entire Family of Israel, swiftly and soon.”
Straddling the coffin, one of the gravediggers released the lowering device. The casket slowly descended out of sight. The other worker removed the tarpaulin from the mound, handing each clergyman a long handled shovel.
Both clergymen stepped to the mound, removing a spade’s load. “May you finally rest in peace,” Miller said, sending the dirt onto the coffin. For an instant, he locked eyes with Joe.
Balaban bowed his head before delivering the full scoop with a thud. “Goodbye my tormented friend.” He turned, re-burying the spade into the mound.
“Say a prayer for him at the Wailing Wall,” Miller said to Balaban, handing the shovel back to the workman. “And throw in one for me.”
“Good things happen to good people,” Balaban said, placing an arm around Miller’s shoulder. “You’ll be okay.”
Joe lit a Marlboro. Watching the Camry pull away, he ambled over to the gravesite. The workmen had removed both the lowering device and the canopy. “The service is over,” came gruffly from the backhoe over the rumble of the diesel engine,
“Yeah, got here late,” Joe yelled, walking to the mound of earth. “Do you mind?” he asked, removing one of the shovels.
“Knock yourself out!” came back with a rev of the engine.
Joe, holding the full shovel, looked into the grave. “Preston, what the hell went on here today?”